Introduction

Programming in R for Data Science

Anders Stockmarr, Kasper Kristensen, Anders Nielsen

A first session

> x<-rnorm(100)
> head(x)
[1] -0.2596588 -0.5439287 -0.3976459 -0.8051366 -0.8854298
[6] -0.1317834
> mean(x)
[1] 0.04613127
> sd(x)
[1] 1.013185
> min(x)
[1] -3.207916
> max(x)
[1] 2.550923

R as a calculator

Basic operations

> 2+2
[1] 4
> 7*17
[1] 119
> sqrt(9)
[1] 3
> 3^3
[1] 27
> log(7)
[1] 1.94591
> log10(7)
[1] 0.845098

Precision

> sin(pi/2)
[1] 1
> pi
[1] 3.141593
> options(digits=22)
> pi
[1] 3.1415926535897931

Infinity or not defined, and missings

> 1/0
[1] Inf
> 2*Inf
[1] Inf
> -1/0
[1] -Inf
> 0/0
[1] NaN
> c(1,2,3,NA,5)
[1]

3 NA

> mean(c(1,2,3,NA,5))
[1] NA

Assignments to variables

> x <- 5
> x
[1] 5
> # x=5 can be used; not recommended
> x*x
[1] 25
> y <- x+5
> ls()
[1] "x" "y"
> rm(x)
> ls()
[1] "y"

Getting help

Different sources

The internal help functions

Manuals

Cheat sheets

Mailing lists

Google

http://stackoverflow.com/

Books

Local R users

Internal help function

If we know what function we need help with, then type:

> ?mean
# shorthand for help(mean)

If we just want to see an example

> example(mean)

Often we dont know exactly what we are looking for

> ??"fitting linear model"
# shorthand for
>
# help.search("fitting linear model")

Manuals

Available on-line http://www.r-project.org, but main ones are also

part of the installation, type:
> help.start()

An Introduction to R and R Data Import/Export are worth looking at.

Cheat sheet

May be useful to mount near you desk when starting with R

Several can be found at http://cran.r-project.org/other-docs.html

Mailing lists

R has an extremely active user base.

The mailing lists are very helpful, you can access many at
https://www.r-project.org/mail.html... but users prefer that you
read and think before you pose questions.

Also they easily smell if you are asking for an answer to a homework
question.

The archive is a goldmine of knowledge

http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/.

Do you know stack overflow?

Main site at: http://stackoverflow.com/

Find tags and R

The rating often gives you a high quality answer

Example http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9508518/
why-are-these-numbers-not-equal

Books

There are many

Here is a list of 150 R books:

http://www.r-project.org/doc/bib/R-books.html

Most are fairly specialized

Local R users

By far the optimal source of information.

Not only are they close by, but on top of explanations, they may even
provide you with a piece of code that nearly does the job.

Remember this when someones comes to you for R help.